There’s a funny internet meme that always goes around my Facebook friends when this reading comes up in the lectionary. The background is a very vivid painting by one of the old renaissance era masters of Jesus driving out the money changers from the temple with a whip, framed by the words, “If anyone ever asks you, ‘What would Jesus do?’ Remind him that flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip is in the realm of possibilities.”
This story of Jesus turning over the tables and chasing the money changers out of the temple appears in all four Gospels, but no one tells it with as much fervor and detail as John. Only in John does Jesus produce a whip, and only in John is it mentioned that in addition to the money changers, Jesus also drove out the sheep and the cattle. Not even cows escaped Jesus’ zeal.
Before we get too far into this, it’s worth remembering that sheep, cows, and money changers were not just in the temple for funsies, there was a very important and useful reason they were there. Jesus was in town for the Passover, one of the pilgrimage festivals in the ancient Jewish tradition. People would travel from all over Judea to Jerusalem to worship in the temple, and an important part of worship was bringing an offering. But, unlike today when we have checks and credit cards and things like that, in the first century people would bring things like sheep, cattle, and doves. Imagine the complication of trying to transport your cow many miles through the desert to bring it to the temple. Not exactly convenient. So merchants began selling animals in the temple to help those traveling long distance be able to fully participate. The money changers were there for a similar purpose. Greek and Roman coins couldn’t be used for temple offering, because the image of the emperor on them was considered idolatry. So money changers were available so travelers could exchange for local coin.
The point of my sharing this information is to show that, like so many other things, the merchants and the money-changers in the temple started out as a way to help people connect to God. But over time, we humans got mixed up in it and it became something that kept people away from God. And whenever we humans turned a thing God gave us to connect into a way to keep people away, Jesus always showed up and set it straight. We saw it when Jesus quote-unquote broke the Sabbath by healing; the Sabbath is for about rest and connection. We saw it with food laws, they were meant to keep us healthy but became about proving who was in, just to name a few. God gave us rules to help us have healthy communities, and anytime humanity tried to use those rules to keep people out rather than keep people in, Jesus just had no time for that nonsense.
So that in and of itself is some pretty good news. But in John’s Gospel there’s even more going on. Because in John, Jesus wasn’t just challenging the rampant consumerist culture that had sprung up at the temple, he was “consumed by zeal.” Zeal is a great word; it connotes this deep, passionate, almost uncontrollable enthusiasm. As the reading goes on, we see that when Jesus said “zeal for your house will consume me,” he was making a passion prediction. Jesus was not talking about the temple at all, but about how his zeal would lead him to the destruction of his body on the cross.
All four Gospels have this story of Jesus overturning the tables and chasing the money changers out of the Temple, but only John places the story so early in Jesus’ ministry. Matthew, Mark, and Luke have the incident taking place during Holy Week, which is probably more historically accurate. It seems unlikely that the religious leadership would have allowed Jesus to make such a stir and then go on with his ministry for another three years. But John locates the story here to make a theological point. Immediately before this was the wedding at Cana, where Jesus first revealed his glory by turning water into wine. Now in this temple scene we see how the new life Jesus is bringing will challenge, even topple, the existing structures. In Cana, Jesus filled stone jars reserved for ritual purification with the best wine for a party, in the temple he will chase out the people who tried to profit off others access to God. But even more than that, the cultural belief of the time was that the temple in Jerusalem was the dwelling place of God, but in Jesus we have God among us, God with skin on, and by dying, by destroying his own body, Jesus will destroy the last barrier that stood between God and humanity, the barrier of death itself, releasing the glory of God into the world.
The good news for us in this story is that Jesus is zealous in his love for us. Jesus is consumed by zeal for God and for God’s people, for us, and Jesus will not let any barrier stand in the way of us and God’s love for us. Jesus has come into this world to turn things over, literally and figuratively, so that nothing, no barrier either human or divine, can stand between us and God. He flipped over tables and chased out the money changers with a whip in the temple, and in a few weeks we’ll hear about how he himself was whipped and then turned the world upside down on a cross, so all-consuming was, is, Christ’s zeal for us.
That is the good news, and here is the challenge. The challenge is this means that some things in your life are going to get flipped. And remember how the merchants and the money changers were originally in the temple for good and helpful reasons, this may mean that some things in your life, some patterns you developed that once were helpful but now are not so much, Jesus may be preparing to flip those things upside down and chase them out of your life. Our hymn of the day talks about how the world is about to turn and not a stone will be left on stone. It’s one of my very favorite hymns, don’t get me wrong, but I remember Bishop Satterlee pointing out in seminary that we all love that song, until we think about how the world God is turning may also be our world, how the fortress towers God is going to dismantle could be fortresses we built. It’s one thing to look out on other’s spears and rods and pray for God to crush them, but are we ready to recognize that we too might be holding some spears that need to be crushed? This passage challenges us to consider what barriers we might have built, to look for things in our own life, in our own church, that Jesus may be coming to turn over. It invites us to ask the question of if we share Jesus’ zeal in removing everything that keeps people from God’s grace and love, even things we like?
Dear people of God, Jesus Christ is zealous, is consumed by his love for you, and nothing, no one and no thing will keep Jesus Christ from you. Lent gives us this blessed time to look at ourselves and at our world and to see what tables may need turning, what barriers may need dismantling, and to begin that work ourselves. It is not easy work, tearing down the things that once seemed helpful can be hard. But here is the good news. Jesus is consumed by the zeal of his love for you. And nothing, nothing, will keep Jesus away. The world is not just about to turn, it has turned. On the cross Jesus turned the world on its axis to break every barrier that kept us from God. This passage invites us, like it did the disciples, to remember that Jesus had said this, and lived those words out in his actions, and to believe what Jesus has spoken. Amen.
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